Word: juror
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Last April before the trial began, the federal prosecutor warned that the jurors in the case would "become celebrities of a sort." And after they decided that John Hinckley was not guilty by reason of insanity,* the twelve Washington men and women were indeed pinioned in the spotlight of press attention. Reporters and TV crews were waiting when they arrived home. Several found the coverage so noisome that they temporarily moved out. Two others took the opportunity to complain publicly that they had been pressured into agreeing to the verdict. Eager journalists flew one of them to New York City...
...vowing to keep mum may not stop the harassment. Local papers will often assign a team of four or five reporters to badger jurors in the first days after a trial. Says the New York Post's combative Steve Dunleavy: "I love to get inside a juror's head." Anthea Frankl sat on the White Plains, N.Y., murder trial growing out of the Stouffer's Inn fire that killed 26 business executives. She saw so many newspeople that she began to rate them, from the New York Times ("totally ethical") to a local Westchester County, N.Y., paper...
George Blyther, 38, was the first to offer an opinion. "Not guilty because of insanity," he said. Jackson said that he leaned toward guilty. So did most of the women, including the only white juror, Merryanna Swartz. Some observers thought that Swartz, 31, might be pivotal because she works as a pathology researcher and has dealt with disturbed adolescents. But she remained generally quiet, and shifted her vote to not guilty over the course of the deliberations. As the discussion progressed, everyone agreed that they were still far from decided. "So we took out the evidence and put our personal...
...hard on you?" one juror asked the foreman, Jackson, the next morning. "No, it ain't hard," he replied. "Maybe someone else should do it," said one member, pointing out Jackson's stutter. The retired janitor agreed. He was promptly replaced by Coffey, at 22 the youngest juror, who was now firmly convinced of Hinckley's innocence. The deliberations began to stumble toward a conclusion...
...prosecutor, with his moralistic oratory and his psychiatrist, who essentially agreed with the defense case, was no match for Litman. "In the end," a juror summed up, "it came down to whether . . . you went with your instincts or your heart." Bonnie's mother Joan had a different interpretation: "If you have a $30,000 defense fund, a Yale connection and a clergy connection, you're entitled to one free hammer murder...